While Intel's regular 13th Generation Core 'Raptor Lake' processors are nearly here, the company's limited edition Core i9-13900KS is a few months away. But some Chinese PC makers appear to already have samples of the said CPU to prepare for the launch and even test their performance. The results were published over at Chinese Bilibili and discovered by HXL. As it turns out the upcoming Core i9-13900KS is quite a mighty chip as it manages to leave behind not only all Raptor Lake processors, but even AMD's shiny new Ryzen 9 7950X.
Intel's Core i9-13900K processor packs eight high-performance Raptor Cove cores as well as 16 energy-efficient Gracemont cores, just like other top-of-the-range Raptor Lake CPUs. While other Core i9-13900K processors can boost their performance cores all the way to 5.80 GHz (one or two cores), the Core i9-13900KS promises a 6.0 GHz boost clock speed. But in addition to this, the limited edition Core i9-13900KS version will also support a 350W turbo mode that will increase boost clocks even further depending on motherboard quality and capabilities of its cooling system.
This 350W mode is an ultimate way to increase single-thread performance of Intel's upcoming limited edition Core i9-13900KS processor and perhaps the company's secret weapon against AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X processors based on the Zen 4 microarchitecture. Meanwhile, high clocks of the Core i9-13900KS naturally affect its performance in multi-threaded workloads.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Launch Price | Cores | Threads | P-Core Base/All Core Boost/Max lBoost | E-Core Base/Boost | TDP / PBP / MTP | Memory | L2+L3 Cache |
| Core i9-13900KS | ? | 8P + 16E | 24 Cores/32 Threads | ? / ? / 6.0 GHz | ? | ? | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 | 68MB |
| Core i9-13900K/KF | $589/$564 | 8P + 16E | 24 Cores/32 Threads | 3.0 / ? / 5.8 GHz | 2.2 / 4.3 GHz | 125W / 253W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 | 68MB |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | $699 | 16 Cores/32 Threads | 4.5 / 5.7 GHz | - | 170W / 230W | DDR5-5200 | 80MB |
| Core i9-12900KS | $739 | 8P + 8E | 16 Cores / 24 Threads | 3.4 / 5.2 / 5.5 GHz | 2.5 / 4.0 GHz | 150W / 241W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 | 44MB |
| Core i9-12900K/KF | $589/$564 | 8P + 8E | 16 Cores / 24 Threads | 3.2 / 5.1 / 5.2 GHz | 2.4 / 3.9 GHz | 125W / 241W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 | 44MB |
At least, early performance numbers of the Core i9-13900KS obtained in CPU-Z benchmark (version 2.0.2.0) shows that it leaves behind not only chips like the Core i9-12900KS and Core i9-13900K, but also AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X both in single-thread and multi-thread performance.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Single-Thread | Multi-Thread |
| Core i9-13900KS | 982.5 | 18453.4 |
| Core i9-13900K | 893 | 16877 |
| Core i9-12900K | 819 | 11424 |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | 787 | 15663 |
We do not know exact hardware configuration tested by the owner of the Core i9-13900KS sample. Secondly, we are dealing with a pre-production CPU with unknown specifications and cooling. Cooling is obviously vital for the 350W mode and someone with LN2 can get record results.
It is worth to keep in mind that the CPU-Z benchmark is a basic synthetic benchmark that may reflect performance in some real-world applications and may not performance in other programs.
Taking into account all of the aforementioned factors, these CPU-Z test results should be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, if the results are accurate, they are nothing but impressive for the Core i9-13900KS.
